


Debut

by Lirillith



Category: Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Fights, Gen, Magical Girls, Pre-Canon, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-27
Updated: 2011-09-27
Packaged: 2017-10-24 03:37:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirillith/pseuds/Lirillith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mami fights her first witch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Debut

    She'd worried about this, but Kyubey, implacable, wasn't letting her get out of it.  She kept her soul gem out, and she'd worried what people would think - if they'd wonder about the glowing object in her hand, if anyone would stop to ask.  But no one did.  No one spared her a glance.  

    The gem didn't start to glow more brightly until she reached a park.  It was nearing sunset.  She closed her fingers over the soul gem, worried that the people she could see - a few couples strolling together, a jogger, a woman pushing a stroller and holding the hand of another child - would notice the golden glow.  Riding on her shoulder, Kyubey didn't show any reaction to her discomfort.  _Eventually you'll learn to recognize witch patterns,_ he told her, _but for right now, just try to identify what the magic feels like._

    She tried to identify it feeling like anything at all.  The only voices she could hear - the woman and her little boy - were too distant to make out any words.  A bird called, harshly.  She felt a chill, but maybe that was just the nervousness.  The gem was growing brighter, and some impulse moved her to leave the pathway.  _You see?  You know what to do._

    "I didn't--" she began, then cut herself off.  _I didn't consciously decide to do that._   The gem was brightening.  She was on the far side of a small pond.  The path she'd been following would have eventually led her around the far side of this pond.  A few ducks paddled in the water, and a woman with two children - not the same one she'd seen with the stroller - was helping the children toss some kind of food to the birds.  The dusk felt much deeper here, in the shadow of the trees.  "There!" she said.  It looked like a metal globe atop a dart, embedded in the tree.  

    _You need to tranform,_ Kyubey said, and she looked around anxiously.  She'd practiced this at home, a few times, but she wanted to be sure no one saw her.  She turned in a circle, then another, a third, picking up speed, and thinking of the costume; the striped stockings, the gloves, the boots, the voluminous skirt and the laced bodice above it.  She felt the ribbons wrap around her, changing, and she reached up to add the hat.  Her soul gem was out of her hand, and she had a moment's panic until she remembered it was on her hat.  

    _Now what?_ she queried him.  _You said I need to enter the witch's barrier?  And this is a witch's egg?_

    _It is a witch's egg, but the witch will only hatch inside the barrier.  You can enter the barrier deliberately, but anyone other than a magical girl can be sucked in with no chance of escape._

    _All right._ She tried to ignore her racing pulse, and swallowed hard.  _How do I go in?_

    _You need to reach out with your magic.  Think of it as though there's a crack in reality, with the Grief Seed right in the middle of it.  You need to widen that crack enough to reveal the gate._

    She reached, and suddenly the air in front of her, around the tree, wavered.  She saw a glowing circle, edged with what looked like feathers.  In the middle of it was a symbol that looked like a black feather with a red ribbon tied to the quill end in a bow.  She knew there was no point to hesitating, but she couldn't make herself move until Kyubey prodded her, _You need to step through the gate now._ She put one foot forward, then the next, her eyes closing involuntarily as she stepped into the light.  

    There were trees in front of her, and at first she didn't think anything had changed, but they were in a different pattern, weren't they?  Mist lay thick on the ground in front of her.  It was dark, much darker than it had been before.  "Am I inside the barrier now?" she asked out loud, but her voice sounded incongruously loud.  

    _Yes.  This is normal.  Often the outer edges of a barrier will look much like the surroundings in the real world where the Grief Seed was found._

    "All right," she said softly, more to herself than Kyubey.  She was able to fight something like this.  No one else could.  "I just need to follow whatever path I can find to try to reach the center."

    _Exactly.  The witch conceals herself so she can't be attacked too easily, but she does want her prey to reach her.  She won't be hard to find._ Mami shivered at _prey_.  She stepped forward, hoping the fog wasn't going to grow hands and grab at her.  It seemed to just be mist, but overhead, she could hear noises like wings.  _The witch will have familiars that may try to attack you,_ Kyubey said, his tone as conversational as ever.  _You need to stay on guard in addition to finding the path._

    "Okay."  She lifted her hand, manifesting a ball of golden light so she could see.  

    _That may draw the familiars to you._

    "Then I can practice by killing them.  They'll be less dangerous than the witch, won't they?"  

    _They're still very dangerous.  Be careful._

    "Of course," she said.  But as she walked, nothing seemed to stir.  The trees around her were larger and older than before, and the undegrowth even thicker.  The path came to be walled in on either side by thorny shrubs.  The mist was still visible at a distance, but it wasn't what was impeding her sight.  And then she heard a bird's harsh cry again, and wings.  She turned, reaching for her gun and feeling it form in her hand.  She spotted the bird, close to her, and fired.  In the explosion of feathers, she thought she'd killed it, but it had veered off.  She threw the gun aside and pulled the next one; this time, as the bird dove, she sighted carefully.  When she pulled the trigger, it dissolved into tendrils of mist.  "I got it!" she exclaimed.  

    _Well done.  But keep your guard up.  
_  
    He was right, of course.  As she kept moving, more and more of the birds - they resembled ravens, but with glowing, red eyes - dove at her.  She took to pulling several guns - out of her soul gem or her body, she could apparently produce them almost anywhere - because the familiars flew erratically and it was hard to land a solid shot the first time.  And then, she found the path widening before her, and she emerged into what she could only describe as a clearing.  

    There was a lake, smooth as glass and veiled with mist.  It was ringed with massive, ancient trees, and she could see ahead of her the ruins of a building.  It was white, made of stone, with portions of its walls crumbling.  In the center of it, black feathers and dead leaves swirled around a figure that seemed to be pirouetting.  It had the head and wings of a crow, but human legs.  _That's the witch?_ she asked Kyubey.  

    _Yes.  Get ready!_

    A blast of feathers shot towards her, and she dove out of the way.  She felt Kyubey's weight leave her shoulder, but she couldn't spare him any attention.  Familiars were flying at her; she sent her ribbons to snare them, knowing she'd need to save her firepower for the witch.  She spun, holding out her hat to drop guns onto the ground in a circle around herself, and then she grabbed the first and took aim.  The witch's pirouettes hadn't stopped.  Mami fired, tossed the gun aside, and fired again.  It stopped twirling and began to lurch toward her, all of its grace gone.  Another shot.  It staggered.  Another, and it screamed.  It didn't sound like a bird, it sounded like a human.  She hesitated, rattled, but then it lunged, and she grabbed two of her guns and threw herself to the left.  Her ribbons, she thought.  Would she let the familiars loose?  She reached for more ribbons, and they seemed to emerge from her chest to wrap around the witch.  

    She shot it with each of the guns, but it was wriggling within its bonds, and her split concentration had let the familiars get free.  She drew a circle in the air with her finger, and more guns appeared around the periphery.  She shot down familiars, mechanically, her eyes on the witch, and then, the coast clear, reached inside herself to see how much power she could spare.  She had more than enough for what she had in mind.  Ribbons focused, wound together to form a wide cylinder.  A gun, a huge one, aimed directly at the pinioned witch.  She'd had the name in mind ever since she realized her power manifested as a gun.  

    "Tiro... FINALE!"  She felt the power focus, as she couldn't with her smaller guns, and then shoot away from her.  When it struck, the witch writhed, screaming, and then fell over.  Something hit the stone with a small, metallic ting.  She looked in that direction.  It resembled the dart-like object she'd seen in the tree.  

    Kyubey trotted over to her and climbed up to her shoulder again.  _I'll need to explain grief seeds to you,_ he began, as the barrier disappeared around her, shrinking away like a slow-motion version of an old TV.  The trees were smaller and more widely-spaced, in reality, and the object - the grief seed? - rested upright on the dirt.

    _All right,_ she responded.  She summoned up a cup of tea for herself - the perfect temperature, not too sweet - and sipped daintily.  Trying to impress Kyubey was pointless, as was pretending to be more composed than she was.  But there was no reason she couldn't fight, and win, with style, even if there was no one to see. 


End file.
